Biofuel production 'is harming the poor'

Demand for biofuels is fuelling poverty, human rights abuses and environmental damage, Christian Aid has warned. The way developed countries are paying out big subsidies to meet targets to boost the production of crops such as maize and palm oil used for fuel, is creating environmental and social problems in poor nations, the charity said. Instead of being an easy fix to tackle climate change, some of the fuels give out higher levels of carbon emissions than fossil fuels, because forests are chopped down to make space to grow the plants used to make the fuels. Large subsidies from the US and Europe had been 'disastrous' and was fuelling 'hunger, severe human rights abuses and environmental destruction' the report said.

It highlighted how small farmers had between forced from their land in Colombia, caused deforestation and poor working rights on sugar plantations in Brazil and food price rises in Central America. The problems could be repeated very shortly in Africa where large scale plantations of the oilseed crop jatropha are being set up, it warned. “The current approach to biofuels has been disastrous,” said Christian Aid climate advocacy specialist, Eliot Whittington, the report's author. “Policymakers should urgently rethink their entire approach to biofuels, to ensure that only crops and fuels which will achieve their social and environmental goals receive government backing.

But with 2.4 billion people worldwide currently without secure sources of energy for cooking and heating, Christian Aid believes the renewable fuels do have the potential to help the poor. The report argues that talking about "good" or "bad" biofuels is oversimplifying the situation, and the problem is not with the crop or fuel - but the policies surrounding them.Developed countries have poured subsidies into biofuel production - for example in the US where between 9.2 billion dollars and 11 billion dollars went to supporting maize-based ethanol in 2008 - when there are cheaper and more effective ways to cut emissions from transport, the report said. The charity said biofuels production needed a "new vision" - a switch from supplying significant quantities of transport fuel for industrial markets to helping poor people have access to clean energy.Biofuels are widely seen as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions compared with normal transport fuels. Burning the fuels releases carbon dioxide; but growing the plants absorbs a comparable amount of the gas from the atmosphere. However, energy is used in farming and processing the crops, and this can make biofuels as polluting as petroleum-based fuels, depending on what is grown and how it is treated.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children